1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology for specifying commodities such as fruits and vegetables or side dishes provided by so-called individual sale, such as “number-based sale” or “weight-based sale,” without being pre-packaged in a pricing process or an accounting process.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-127295, filed Jun. 7, 2011, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
Individual sale commodities have been increasing at food retailers, such as supermarkets according to requests to reduce packaging materials or individual needs of consumers. However, in individual sale, it is difficult to attach a barcode or an RFID tag to a commodity to specify the commodity. Thus, specifying of commodities necessary when a commodity information-processing device (which refers to a POS register, a face-to-face weighing device, a self-service scale, or a pricing machine in the present application) performs a pricing process, an accounting process or the like is difficult. In particular, when there are tens of types of commodities in an individual sale form, a risk of an accounting mistake due to a difference in commodities increases.
Japanese Patent No. 2595427 discloses a system for specifying a commodity by recognizing a color or a shape of the commodity using a camera. Also, Japanese Patent No. 4024924 discloses a device for specifying a commodity using a weight of the commodity, although not necessarily directed to use by food retailers.
However, in the device disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2595427, if a purchase quantity is changed each time as in an individual sale form and a commodity is received in a plastic bag by a customer when the commodity is specified, there is a disadvantage in that accuracy of the search is degraded because the search is performed only through a comparison between data captured when the commodity is specified and captured commodity image comparison data (optical characteristic data) prepared in a commodity database in advance.
Further, the device of Japanese Patent No. 4024924 is intended to be used for commodity classification, and a set weight value stored in a commodity information storage unit is set on the premise that the weight or the number of a weighed commodity is determined in advance. Meanwhile, in the individual sale, since the number or the weight of commodities purchased by the customer varies each time, a simple comparison between the sale number or the sale weight with a weight recorded in commodity information prepared in advance is useless.